Trump administration demands foreign students make social media accounts public

The State Department announced on Wednesday that it will consider online presence in the selection process for F, J, and M nonimmigrant visas — the international student and visiting scholar visa categories — and instructed applicants to make their social media profiles public. 

The Bechtel Center said in an email sent to international students on Thursday that “this may be important information especially for [students] who will be traveling outside the U.S. and will need to obtain a new F-1 or J-1 visa to reenter.” This means that the measure will impact both prospective students seeking visas and current students who must obtain a new visa for reentry into the U.S. including students whose visas have expired or been cancelled. 

Under the new policy, consular officers are instructed to identify “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States” on visa applicants’ social media pages, according to reporting by the New York Times. The State Department “did not provide further details on how officers would define that criteria.” 

The University wrote to the Daily that the Bechtel Center offers resources for the international community, many of which can be accessed on its immigration website.

This policy comes as another development in President Donald Trump’s aggression towards foreign students in higher education, which included the suspension of new student visa interviews and the since-restored termination of visas from thousands of international students in May. The State Department announcement said that visa appointments at embassies and consulates will resume soon.

The Trump administration has specifically targeted Chinese students. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May that the U.S. would “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students,” and Congress demanded that Stanford release information about Chinese international students in April. 

University president Jonathan Levin ’94 has faced criticism for his response to the Trump administration’s attacks to higher education and international students. While Levin has affirmed the importance of international students to the University’s scholarship and research, critics urge him to directly condemn the Trump administration’s actions. A petition released in April and now signed by over 3,000 students, faculty and alumni called for Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez to issue a statement criticizing Trump’s campaign against higher education. Later that month, Levin abstained from signing an anti-Trump letter published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Among the letter’s signatories were presidents of peer institutions such as Harvard and Columbia. In May, the University denied any awareness of a private, elite university collective opposing the Trump administration as reported by the Wall Street Journal. 

Several members of Stanford faculty have expressed outrage at the Trump administration’s interference in international student enrollment. 

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